Third FIDE Grand Prix 2012-13 starts in Zug

4/18/2013 – The third stage of the Grand Prix Series was originally scheduled to take place in Lisbon, Portugal, and staged by AGON. It was moved to a picturesque Swiss town and is being run by the tried and tested FIDE Grand Prix team. Among the twelve participants of the tournament are three former world champions: Ponomariov, Topalov and Kasimdzhanov. Round one starts at two p.m. this afternoon.

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From April 14 to April 30, 2013, the third stage of the FIDE Grand Prix Series
2012-2013 will take place in Zug, Switzerland. Twelve players will compete in
a round robin tournament with time controls of 120 minutes for the first 40
moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 15 minutes and an increment
of 30 seconds per move for each player. The Grand Prix Series consists of six
tournaments to be held over two years, with 18 top players, each participating
in four of the six tournaments. The winner and second placed player overall
of the Grand Prix Series will qualify for the Candidates Tournament to be held
in March 2014.

Sponsoring the event is the Renova Group
of companies, Russia's leading private business group that consists of asset
management companies and direct and portfolio investment funds owning and managing
assets in metals mining, machine building, mining, construction development,
energy, telecommunications, nanotechnologies, utilities and financial sector
in Russia and abroad.

Opening ceremony

The opening ceremony took place at the SwissEver Hotel Zug 6 p.m. on 17th of
April. It was attended by FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, FIDE CEO Geoffrey
Borg, Chief Risk and Compliance Officer from Renova Group Rolf Schatzmann, Director
of the Sport Office of the Canton of Zug Cordula Ventura, Ambassador of the
Republic of Azerbaijan Arkam Zeynalli, First Secretary of the Embassy of the
Republic of Azerbaijan Ramin Mirzayev, First Secretary of the Embassy of the
Russian Federation Konstantin Ushakov. And of course the players.

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov greeted the participants, guests and expressed
his gratitude to Renova Group and its chairman of the Board Directors Viktor
Vekselberg, sponsors, mass media representatives for their support and dedication
to chess. “I’m confident that we will all savor the hospitality
of the people of Switzerland and will fully appreciate the high organizational
level of this sport celebration!” said FIDE President.

On behalf of Renova Group Rolf Schatzmann (above) welcomed all officials, participants
and wished the players to use the opportunity to learn more about the history
of Switzerland, visit Zug and its suburbs. He also explained why Zug was chosen
to host the third stage of Grand Prix: the chairman of the Renova Board Directors
Viktor Vekselberg
lives in here and he thought it would be nice idea to organize such an interesting
chess event in the canton of Zug. Vekselberg is number 52 on the Forbes
2013 list of the world's top richest human beings.

Some background: The cooperation between AGON and FIDE was
announced a year ago, and the Grand
Prix venues for 2013 were supposed to be Lisbon in April, Madrid in May/June,
Berlin in July and Paris in September. So far, however, AGON has not been able
to sign sponsorship deals yet – and with Lisbon in danger of cancellation
FIDE itself found the new sponsor for Zug. The FIDE team will be running the
event, which meas there will be no deployment of the ChessCasting
system developed by AGON and used in the Candidates Tournament in London
last month.

The chief arbiter of the tournament Panagiotis Nikolopoulos conducted drawing
of lots: each participant – above Teimour Radjabov – chose one of
12 boxes with famous Swiss chocolates and the starting number inside. Full pairings
are given below.

Unhappy? Third seed Fabiano Caruana gets the start
number three

A musical presentation, Swiss style with accordion,
clarinet and contrabass

The playing venue, with live webcam broadcast on
the Internet

At the technical meeting chief arbiter Panagiotis Nikolopoulos drew attention
to the “no-draw offer” and "zero tolerance" rules. Players
will not be allowed to offer draws directly to their opponents and will continue
to play if the chief arbiter does not authorize a draw offer made through him.
Draw claims will only be accepted in case of a three-fold repetition, a theoretically
drawn position and according to the 50-move rule. The zero tolerance rule require
players to be seated at their boards when the games are scheduled to start,
or they will lose the game by default.

Zug, Switzerland

Zug is a German-speaking city in Switzerland. The name ‘Zug’, which
is pronounced "tsook", originates from fishing vocabulary; in the
Middle Ages it referred to the right to ‘pull up’ fishing nets and
hence to the right to fish. The oldest human traces date back to the time of
around 14,000 BC. with Paleolithic finds coming from nomadic hunters and collectors.
In addition, many traces from the Iron Age (850-50 BC) and the Roman and Celtic-Roman
time (from 50 BC) have been discovered.

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